Review of John Taylor, The Race for Consciousness

Abstract

This ambitious work apparently has two main aims. The first is to provide a survey of the currently burgeoning field of “Consciousness Studies”, presented via the extended metaphor of a horse \textlessspan class=‘Hi’\textgreaterrace\textless/span\textgreater whose winning post is a full scientific explanation of consciousness. The second, which receives much more space, is to present Taylor’s own cognitive/neuroscientific theory, dubbed “relational consciousness”, and to persuade us that it should be the odds-on favourite to win. Neither aim is very well realized.